Nokia announced on Sunday that it will change its brand identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, introducing a new logo as the telecom equipment maker shifts focus to aggressive growth.
The new logo consists of five different shapes forming the word NOKIA, and the iconic blue color has been replaced with a range of colors depending on its application.
“There was the association with smartphones, but nowadays we are a business technology company,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark told in an interview.
He spoke ahead of a business update by the company on the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which opens in Barcelona on Monday and runs until March 2.
Since taking over the top position at the struggling Finnish company in 2020, Lundmark implemented a strategy with three stages: reset, accelerate, and scale.
With the reset stage now complete, Lundmark stated that the company is beginning the second stage.
While Nokia still aims to grow its service provider business, where it sells equipment to telecom companies, its main focus is now on selling gear to other businesses.
“We had very good 21% growth last year in enterprise, which currently accounts for about 8% of our sales, or roughly 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion),” Lundmark said.
“We want to take that to double digits as quickly as possible.”
Major technology firms have been partnering with telecom gear makers such as Nokia to sell private 5G networks and equipment for automated factories, primarily to customers in the manufacturing sector.
Nokia plans to review the growth path of its various businesses and consider alternatives, including divestments.
“The signal is very clear. We only want to be in businesses where we can see global leadership,” Lundmark said.
Nokia’s move toward factory automation and data centers will also see them competing with big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
“There will be multiple different types of cases. Sometimes they will be our partners, sometimes they will be our customers, and I am sure that there will also be situations where they will be competitors.”
The market for selling telecom gear is under pressure, with the macro environment affecting demand from high-margin markets such as North America, which is being replaced by growth in low-margin India. This shift has pushed rival Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees.
“India is our fastest-growing market that has lower margins—this is a structural change,” Lundmark said, adding that Nokia expects North America to be stronger in the second half of the year.
